A so-called “historian,” who radio host Glenn Beck hired to teach at his online university and is now considering a run for the U.S. Senate, recently asserted that climate change was an example of God’s judgment “on the spot” for sins like abortion.

In an appearance on televangelist’s Kenneth Copeland Believer’s Voice of Victory that was posted online on Thursday, David Barton pointed out that abortion was a “crime in God’s eyes.”

Copeland agreed that voting for candidates who supported abortion rights “opened the door to the curse.”

“A door has been opened and we have said, ‘You know, we embraced a wicked policy,’” Barton opined. “Okay, then I’ll take my hand of protection off your nation and whap, here comes storms like we’ve never seen before. And here comes floods like we’ve never seen before. And here comes the climate stuff that we can’t explain. All the hot times and all the cold times. Too much rain and not enough rain. And we’re flooding over here and we’ve got droughts over here.”

This whole meme of God “removing his protection” from mankind generally or from America specifically for failing to hew to patriarchal ideas of sexual ethics or family structure is a familiar one, though it fell out of fashion a bit after this September 11, 2001 televised comment from the late Jerry Fallwell:

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”

What fascinates me most about this way of thinking is that in adopting the “prophetic stance” of calling down and celebrating God’s Wrath on a wicked society, people like Falwell and Barton (and many others, though usually not so overtly) are confirming their hatred of America, which ought to be a bit more controversial coming from people who almost certainly regard themselves as super-patriots, not to mention conservatives and (most of the time) Republicans. It’s paralleled by the insistence of so many “constitutional conservatives” on a right of revolution against any government that might violate their belief that, say, gun rights or property rights are absolute.

They may endlessly trumpet their love and fidelity for an “America” of the imagined past, but not the one they inhabit currently, which tolerates baby-killers and sodomites and elects and re-elects Barack Obama as president. To paraphrase Falwell, it’s far past time to “put a finger in their face” and call them what they are: America-haters.

Ed Kilgore
is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly. He is managing editor for The Democratic Strategist and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. Find him on Twitter: @ed_kilgore.

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